The Khadaji Memorial Steelers March to the Super Bowl Thread

The Game Room
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Yes, football starts tonight and so it’s time for this year’s installment. It’s become one of those things for me, when I post this it’s time for the NFL to kick off. This year I’m doing it a little late… well, actually, a LOT late considering that tonight is the opening kickoff, but better late than never, I say. So, to start off, as you can see by the title, this thread is dedicated to the late Khadaji, a longtime loyal Steelers fan like myself, a prolific contributor to these threads, gone far too soon.

Now, I could start by talking a whole bunch of trash, but I won’t. That comes later. Right now I’ll start with a clear-eyed review of the Steelers.

Offense: Todd Haley is a bum. Whatever he’s doing, nobody is buying into it. In spite of that, the Steelers have Ben healthy under center, and if he can stay that way things will happen. Unfortunately, that’s about it. Heath Miller is still out, Antonio Brown will draw double coverage, Emmanuel Sanders hasn’t proven himself yet, and the rest of that cupboard is bare. The running game? Who knows? The new kid, Bell, has a lot of upside, but he’s laid up to start the season. Redman gets the start backed up by Felix Jones, a guy with lots of talent but a questionable heart. Also, the Steelers have had trouble in the past few years putting it into the end zone. Will it all come together? Time will tell. The really good news, though, is that the offensive line is pretty young and will only get better as time goes on.

Defense: Troy is healthy, Goddamn Ike Taylor is still getting burned like an arsonist in Hell, the linebackers will have a really good season with the rookie Jarvis Jones seeing a lot of time, Cortez Allen looked really good in preseason… They’ll still be really good, though with Taylor and a few missed Polamalu gambles they’ll still give up some big plays. We’ll see how it goes. If they can’t manufacture turnovers, something they couldn’t do last year, nothing else will matter.

Special teams: HAHAHAHA! The Steelers’ special teams are garbage. They gave up a 109-yard return, a blocked field goal and a blocked punt in preseason. The good news is that they can only get better. The bad news is that they have to.

As for the rest of the division, Baltimore will come down to Earth now that Mr. Stabby is gone and Succo ate his team’s payroll and has nobody to throw to, not to mention that he was already erratic at best. Pack 8 in the box and jam Torrey Smith and you’re money. Cleveland? They still play in the Factory of Sadness, their owner is mired in a scandal, their coach is a rookie, their quarterback is a geriatric palooka… yeah, nothing will change there. The Bungles? This is an historic era they’re going through right now, they’re in the midst of a few good years in a row. It can’t last, but they probably do well this year. My sister could complete 60% of her passes going to A.J. Green, so they have that going for them, at least.

But this thread is where I express my unbridled optimism for the upcoming season. Pundits put the Steelers at 7-9, maybe 8-8. I’m going to go against the grain (imagine that) and say that they take the division at 10-6. As always, hope springs eternal (hence the thread title), but let’s be honest. This is a rebuilding year. They have the tools to take the division, let’s see if they actually do it.

Also, FOOTBALL! God I missed it. It’s so good to be back.

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Yay, we’re back!

I have little for analysis. The preseason taught me nothing. I think the defence will be great again and I think the offence hinges largely around the improvement of the offensive line. DeCastro looked good at least. Personally, I like Haley. His system doesn’t require a guy like Wallace to take the top off and Ben was on pace for a career year before he got injured and came back with Favre-like reckless cowboy abandon.

Special Teams? Hope springs eternal. It was a big focus for them. The ST coach made the final cuts at LB and DB and they signed a free agent for his play on those units. We’ll see.

Wonderful name for the thread. I’ll miss Khadaji weekly hand-wringing over whether he was jinxing them or not by watching the games.

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So my sister calls me on Thursday night, telling me she might have a line on some tickets. Well, guess what?

That’s right, I’m going to the game! It’s going to be a hella long day with all the driving we have to do, but it’s worth it.

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I was worried for a bit that this thread was somehow not going to make an appearance this year: silly me. I was afraid that I might have to start a substitute thread entitled “The Monkey’s First Chargers’s Death March to Over .500 Thread.”
Just curious** Airman**, what’s the anniversary number on this one, and have you missed any years?

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This is number 11, and since the first one in 2003 (which I started on a whim to get our now-banned Weirddave, a rabid Ratbirds fan, fired up) I have not missed any years. Aside from the first one this is the latest I’ve started it.

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Hoping for the best! LET’S GO STEELERS!!!

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Ah, I wondered where this thread was :slight_smile:

Even though I’m going to point out that this will more likely be a march toward the Super Bowl than actually to it, here’s a beer toast to all doper football fans. Good luck with the Steelers- I think you may be right, they could win their division, and then who knows.

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And Decastro sends Pouncey off the field on a cart…

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And surefire Hall-of-Famer Jerricho Cotchery(???) catches a late touchdown to spare the Steelers a score of 2. Mods, can you rename this obviously mistitled thread?

TIA

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Offense played like garbage…

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On the bright side, the Steelers are still tied for first place in the division.

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Unbelievable.

Unbelievable!

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If I had to try I don’t think I could come up with a game in which so much went wrong. Two of the team captains are gone for the year, Pouncey with his ACL/MCL tear and Foote with his biceps tear. Foote is on the backside of his career and is replaceable. Pouncey is not, not with what Pittsburgh has in the cupboard. Also injured is Cortez Allen, one of the two starting cornerbacks. It would be very difficult for me to think of a single time period aside from a plane crash where a team was so destroyed so quickly.

So the offense was going fine except for Redman’s two fumbles, one of which was into the endzone from the 1, a gimme touchdown had he taken the ball properly, and Sanders’ four (count 'em, four) outright drops. When your only job is to catch the football and it hits you in both of your hands, it might be time to find a new career path. Wheaton will be starting before we know it.

The defense held up OK given that they were on the field seemingly the entire second half, though they were giving up 10 yards at a time on quick outs because Goddamn Ike Taylor couldn’t cover anybody. Why he gets so much hype as a great cover guy is absolutely beyond me.

In the end, they lost a game that they should have won. No, it’s not because of any fix or anything like that, it’s because they made Jake Fucking Locker look like Peyton Manning. When you get red meat like that you simply have to win. I have never been to a Steelers game where the fans booed the home team so unmercifully.

Oh, and fire Haley. It’s worse than I thought.

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Well, it could have been worse. It could have been the other game in which a team scored only a safety.

Airman, do you have a TotalFark account?

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Why yes I do. I didn’t feel like re-typing it because I covered all the bases, so I just C&P’d it over there.

Which, of course, means that YOU have a TotalFark account. I’ll try to figure out who you are.

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At some point Tomlin is going to need to be held accountable for how he manages the roster. We cut Starks, Colon, Malecki, Scott, Legursky and replaced them with Guy Fucking Whimper (who had a terrible preseason) and Beachum… who was also our OLB backup. Both a C and OLB goes down in the game and now what, Beachum backs up both? Also, he kept 5 TE’s on the final roster… FIVE.

Also, the De Castro chop block wasn’t a freak thing, it looked like 70% bad technique and 30% wrong place/wrong time. So I blame coaching staff.

But yea, Ben is going to get killed this year. That has to be the worst O-Line in the NFL now.

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Don’t bother. I really don’t have one. I’ve read it for years but never signed up to post.

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Starks couldn’t make the team over in San Diego. His career is over. Colon wanted too much money, as did Legursky, and the Steelers were having cap issues. As for the tight ends, they keep getting jacked up, and Haley’s offense depends on productive tight ends.

Maybe. But the point was made that chop blocks are verboten in the preseason, so that was his first one in more than a season. Truthfully, I think they should ditch chop blocks, too.

I don’t know that I would go that far, but we’ll see. There is a huge amount of potential on that line.

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I think it’s time to say goodbye to Tomlin, Haley and everyone elson the coaching staff it’s the exception of Dick Lebeau. LeBeau might be getting ready to retire, but he has shown loyalty to the franchise and he has almost always produced top 5 defenses. You can’t ask more than thst from anyone.

My thoughts:

  1. Tomlin and/or the GM (name has escaped me for the moment) have drafted very poorly since Tomlin took the HC job. I can’t think of one impact player Tomlin and the Steelers have drafted and developed except for Pouncy, and HE was just taken out of the season by last years number 1, David DeCasteo. If I was Pouncy, I would sue DeCasteo for a flagrant attempt to injure. He dove onto his own teammates legs fom behind without a Titan anywhere close to him. It looked like he did it on purpose, and it’s hard to find ANY reason as to why he did what he did. It was almost as if he had his eyes closed, ran and leaped onto the back of Pouncys leg.

2). I hope this injury to Pouncy puts to bed the idiotic talk from Pittsburgh fans lately on the idea that Pouncy is over-rated. Over-rated? How did the O-line do without him today? How bad will the O-line be for the rest of the season? It is an ugly place we find ourselves in after the first game. Pouncy was not over-rated, and now that he’s gone, the anchor of the o-line, you will see the o-line sucking majority and Ben running for his life and career.

  1. Todd Haley has to be fired immediately. I know the Steelers won’t can him or Tomlin in mid season, but Haley’s offense is a joke. Remember Steelr fans, when you were calling for bruce Ariens head? Well, who would you rather have there now? Ariens or Haley? And Ariens would be a perfect candidate to slide into an interim HC job, if the Steelers wanted to can Tomlin during the season. They no longer have thst option, because there is no one else on the coaching staff that is ready. Lebeau is too old and doesn’t want it.

4). This is the worst Steelers team I Can remember seeing. Can anyone out there remember a team that looked less prepared than today’s Steelers? That falls on the coaching staff. I guess that 0-4 pre season WAS something to worry about after all. They looked lost today. A home opener against an easy opponent, and they lay an egg before a sellout home crowd. Simply put, they looked awful. They executed very poorly. This is a bad team… Now, who is to blame? Why did we keep the players we did, while cutting the ones we did? Who is responsible for the players n that 53 man roster? It’s a joke, and they should be fired. That’s the coaching staff.

5). I saw nothing today that gives me any hope for this season. The defense played well, but they always do. And the Titans didn’t have to pass on them to get the points they needed to win. Just wait until a team like the Bengals comes to play and they air it out overtop of Gay again and again.

6). I wasn’t high on our new Running back anyway, but now, with the o-line in pieces, he hasn’t a prayer. Unless he’s Barry Sanders, and he isn’t, he is going to need some blocking to get yards. And I didn’t see any blocking today.

  1. when your best running back is Felix Jones, a cast off from another team, WTF have you been doing for the past 7 years or so when you were supposed to be evaluating RB talent?

8). This could be the longest season for the Steelers in a long time. I hope they don’t blow what could be a very high draft pick.

  1. what a mess… And I’ll ask this agsin because it is inexplicable to me. WTF was DeCastro doing?
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I almost forgot how reactive Steelers fans can be to a game. But hey, there’s science to back it up. At least on Twitter, you guys are only slightly more stable than Raiders fans.